Obama Too Tired to Treat PM Brown with Proper Respect

Many people are skeptical about President Obama’s foreign policy skills, but offering a welcoming hand to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ought to be a no-brainer. Great Britain is our oldest and staunchest ally. Obama has superhuman charm skills and you’d think he would be a great host. You'd think.

Brown came to Washington and met a White House and a State Department that was embarrassingly unprepared for his arrival. No state dinner, no joint press conference. Brown presented Obama with the definitive biography of Winston Churchill and then found out that the bust of Churchill given by Tony Blair to George W. Bush was returned by Obama’s staff to the British embassy. Brown then presented Obama with a pen holder made from the timber of a warship that combated the slave trade. In return Obama gave Brown a stack of Hollywood DVDs. Doubly unthoughtful because Brown is blind in one eye and thereof is not much of a movie buff, and the DVDs are not compatible with British playing systems.

The excuse the White House gave for this embarrassing performance was that Obama is overwhelmed with handling the financial crisis and is exhausted and out of sorts. He's this exhausted after 50 days? And people are comparing him to FDR and Lincoln?

One State Department official, when questioned by the London Telegraph, compounded the embarrassment by insulting the special relationship between America and Great Britain. “There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."

If this is a clue to how our foreign policy is going to be handled over the next four years, then we have some serious problems coming our way.

This is a sneak peek at the Friday Digest available at The Patriot Post